How Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard’s heated TV confrontation with paparazzi got out of hand
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The ongoing crusade by Kristen Bell and her husband Dax Shepard against the paparazzi just stepped up a notch.

E! Online reports on the battle royale that ensued between the acting couple and representatives for the tabloid press that unfolded on Thursday’s episode of Access Hollywood.

In one corner: former Veronica Mars fixture Bell and her husband Shepard, best known for current his role on the NBC family drama Parenthood.

As most people know, Bell and Shepard, who are parents to 11-month-old daughter Lincoln, have been waging an all-out campaign in recent months to protect children of celebrity parents from overly aggressive photographers.

And to some degree, they’re winning the battle. So far, People magazine, Entertainment Tonight and JustJared.com have each made public declarations that they will no longer buy photographs from agencies that take pictures of star-kids.

But for Bell and Shepard, the war against paparazzi is a marathon, not a sprint. These two are in this fight for the long haul.

Bell came out swinging: “I’m telling you as a mom, when I’m holding my baby, your foot soldiers are nasty. What they might be doing is ‘legal,’ but when I get off an airplane and I’m walking to my car and it’s dark and I’m with my baby by myself, it’s terrifying.”

For good measure, Shepard added: “If you don’t have an ethical issue with that, you don’t have ethics.”

Ginsburg countered by telling Bell she was “hysterical” and asserted “it is our constitutional right to take the picture!”

At one point in the segment, Bell asked her opponents whether they would ever stop taking photos of celebrity children.

To which Zimmerman replied, “To be frank about business, no.”

As might have been predicted, there was no winner or loser declared in the TV showdown, but Bell was fittingly forthright and eloquent in explaining why she and her husband initiated their anti-paparazzi campaign.

“I don’t think under any circumstance a child should have a price on their head,” said Bell. “I think it should be a sacred time when you grow up and if you don’t choose to be in this business, like the children don’t, we’ve got to leave them out of it.”